OSU nuclear engineering professor: Oil and natural gas to run out in 40 to 80 years

Energy and how the U.S. will continue producing it is top of mind today, especially as the country tries to slowly wind down some of its use of coal for electricity. So other alternatives, whether it be fellow fossil fuels like natural gas or renewables like wind and solar power, often are discussed.

Nuclear energy often is left in the cold in public discourse, especially since the 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. Rich Denning, a nuclear engineering professor at Ohio State University, is a booster of the energy source, as you might expect.

Six new nuclear plants could come to the U.S. by 2020, following three decades of little new activity. Still, the country’s electricity production is coal-based.

I sat down with Denning after moderating a debate, where he was a panelist, on the future of nuclear energy at the Columbus Metropolitan Club

Here’s an edited sampling of our talk on the state of nuclear.

Q: I talked to Pablo Vegas, AEP Ohio’s president, about some coal-powered plants having to shut down because of EPA regulations. I said, ‘What about nuclear?’ He said that it’s too expensive.

A: That isn’t really true. With regards to coal, obviously coal without carbon capture is inexpensive, even with scrubbers and things like that. But of course they still emit carbon dioxide. Realistically, there should at least be something like a carbon tax on that because it’s very clear that global warming is real. If we want to use coal to make electricity, what we should probably do is carbon capture. That’s so expensive that it’s probably not going to happen. With regards to the cost of nuclear, when you take the initial cost of a plant, levelize it over the lifetime of the plant, then nuclear is cost-competitive. It’s not quite competitive with natural gas today, but natural gas is not going to stay at the low cost it is today. Whether it’s five or 10 years, that advantage of gas over nuclear is going to go away.

But there are a couple of problems with nuclear. First, you have a very large initial capital investment. It takes a period of time to build that plant. During that time, depending on local regulations, you can charge that cost to consumers or you can’t. You could be sitting there with a huge investment that you’re paying interest on and not getting anything back. Utilities who clearly are in business to make profit aren’t going to do that if they have alternatives.

Q: Coal and natural gas are finite, they’re going to end eventually. Wind and solar and renewables aren’t at capacity to power everything. So what is going to be ...

A: It’s going to be nuclear or we’re going to be in trouble. It’s not going to be in fusion. Whether it could be some biological thing – it’s unlikely. If it uses freshwater, it isn’t going to happen. Demands for agricultural purposes are going to be such that you’re not going to be diverting anything – for example, ethanol with corn, that is not going to happen in the future. Recovery techniques like fracking, we’re going to use them because demand is so high. But that resource is going to go away. Forty years may sound like a long time but if you’re 74 years old, it doesn’t seem like a long period of time. It seems like yesterday. When you look at future generations are going to think about what we did burning all of that resource, they are going to revile us. We are the selfish generation, there’s no question about that.

Q: What happened at Fukushima – will it make it harder for people to get on board with nuclear? They can say well, we can just drill.

A: They’ve been very economically operated the last 15 years or so. But again, you’re going to see a decrease in nuclear power over a period of time before you start to see it come back. It’s got to come back because there aren’t any other options out there. You see a lot of discussion on global warming, and global warming is a major issue. If we really get 40 years in the future and suddenly you have this major deficiency in energy, it’s catastrophic. The scenarios are the kind of scenarios you see in science fiction movies. It’s truly frightening.

Q: So you think 40 years is when natural gas runs out?

A: I think somewhere between 40 years and 80 years we’re going to run out of oil and natural gas.